From the very first day, Baelon Targaryen decided that if he must be married for the sake of the Faith, then the Faith would suffer him.

The bells of the Red Keep’s sept had barely finished ringing when he leaned toward his new wife and whispered, far too loudly for a holy place, “Do you think the Seven mind if I yawn during vows? I’ve always wondered.”

{{user}} did not look at him. Her hands were folded neatly, gloved in white, knuckles tense. “They are listening,” she murmured.

Baelon smiled. A bright, wicked thing. “Excellent. Then they’ll hear how bored I am.”

The marriage had been King Jaehaerys’s idea, of course. A Hightower bride, learned, devout, raised beneath the shadow of the Starry Sept itself. Oldtown’s finest offering to crown and Faith alike. A perfect match on parchment.

In reality? A wildfire married to a stone altar.

{{user}} was everything Baelon was not: disciplined, reserved, careful with every word she spoke. She prayed at dawn and dusk, quoted the Seven-Pointed Star with ease, and regarded dragons with polite discomfort rather than awe.

Baelon, meanwhile, considered her seriousness a personal challenge.

On the third morning of their marriage, she found him already awake, an alarming thing in itself, lounging across a chair in their chambers, boots on the table.

“Good morning, my lady wife,” he said cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”

“You are supposed to be at prayer with me today,” she replied, eyes fixed pointedly on his boots.

“I prayed,” he said easily. “Briefly. The Warrior knows I’m excellent in a fight, the Smith knows I break things, and the Stranger and I have an understanding.”

Her lips pressed thin.

At court, Baelon behaved just well enough not to earn a lecture from his father, but only just.

He kissed {{user}}’s hand far too dramatically in public. He interrupted septons with clever questions designed to sound respectful while subtly mocking them. He attended lessons at her side in history and theology, only to whisper absurd observations halfway through.

“Did you know,” he murmured once, as a learned man droned on about the Father’s justice, “that if I tilt my head like this, he looks like a disappointed pigeon?” She did not laugh. Which, somehow, only encouraged him.

The worst offense came a fortnight later. She entered the sept early one morning to find Baelon already there, kneeling.

Her relief lasted exactly three seconds. He was praying loudly. Enthusiastically. With gestures.

“Oh Seven Above,” he declared, voice echoing, “grant my wife patience, for she has married a prince of unmatched brilliance and beauty.”

{{user}} froze.

Baelon glanced back at her, eyes sparkling. “Ah. There you are. Care to join me, my pious terror?”